Intellectual montage

(Montaje intelectual / Montage intellectuel)

What is known as intellectual montage was originally the fifth of the methods outlined by Sergei Eisenstein in a 1929 text. The Soviet director mentioned the following categories: metric montage, which takes into account the identical length of a group of shots; rhythmic montage which in response to the internal movement in the frame generates sequences of shots that appear to have the same duration; tonal montage, where all the shots in a sequential block reflect a single "emotional tone or sound"; overtonal montage, where a group of shots with a dominant visual motif is combined with groups of shots with other motifs, as in a piece of music for several voices; and intellectual montage, which Eisenstein defined as "intellectual harmony", a category of greater complexity in which the dominant voice expressed in one or more shots may differ considerably from the rest, colliding with one or more other shots so that the audience seeks and finds the meaning of that harmonious association that sometimes reaches symbolism or metaphor.

The legacy of the intellectual montage of Eisenstein can be found in counterpoint sequences such as the initial block of Hiroshima mon amour, of Alain Resnais, with voice-over of the lovers on the documentary images of the effects of the atomic bomb on the inhabitants of Hiroshima

In "Manifesto for Orchestral Counterpoint", from the early years of sound film, the signatories Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin and Grigori Aleksandro proposed a concept similar to intellectual montage but instead of associations of images they talked about a mismatch between image and sound, simultaneously seeking complementarity and avoiding repetition as a way to add information. The audio-visual counterpoint is a derivative of intellectual montage and represents one of the most ambitious ways to transmit information. Eisenstein put this into practice in some points of Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Patyomkin, 1925) and in numerous sequences in October: Ten Days That Shook the World (Oktyabr, 1928). The legacy of Eisenstein's intellectual montage can be found in counterpoint sequences such as the initial block of Hiroshima My Love (Hiroshima Mon Amour, 1959) by Alain Resnais, with the voiceover of the lovers heard over the documentary images of the effects of the atomic bomb on the inhabitants of Hiroshima, and in Her (2013) by Spike Jonze, in various sequences such as the one with the protagonist having sex with a girl whose voice is that of the operating system he has fallen in love with.

Léolo

Léolo / Léolo | Jean Claude Lauzon, 1992, Canada/France.

Léo Lauzon is a child who lives in a poor district of Montreal, trapped in a squalid existence. Every night he tries to escape through memories, dreams, reading and his boundless imagination, but the harsh reality of the family always interrupts his fantasies: he has a father obsessed with the intestinal health of the whole family, a bodybuilder brother who is a prisoner of fear, two sisters suffering from mental disorders, a psychopath grandfather and a hugely courageous mother who tries to control such dysfunctional domestic microcosms as best she can. In such an environment, Léo comes to believe that he owes his existence to a fortuitously fertilised Italian tomato. From that moment he decides to call himself Léolo Lozone.

When I write, I fall into a curious state: I stop writing, I read more, I listen to more songs that interest me. In the script, each thing has been written based on music

Jean Claude Lauzon

(1953-1997)

On 10 August 1997 a Cessna 180 plane crashed in a wooded area of northern Québec, Canada. The only two occupants, a couple who had come to spend the day fishing, died in that fatal accident. Within a few hours the event was all over the news in both Canada and the rest of the world as the two people who died were none other than Marie-Soleil Tougas, a well-known actress and presenter on Canadian television, and her boyfriend, Jean Claude Lauzon, director of the internationally acclaimed Léolo, which unfortunately would be his second and last film. Born in a poor district of Montreal, during his adolescence Lauzon left school and went to work on the Ontario tobacco and corn plantations. Before the age of 25 he had already worked as a factory labourer, librarian, lumberjack, diving instructor and even taxi driver. Finally he managed to graduate in Communications from the University of Québec, a qualification that would later allow him to study film in the city of Los Angeles. After making a handful of short films and winning a few awards, in 1988 Lauzon managed to complete what would become his début, Night Zoo (Un zoo la nuit), with which he won thirteen Genie Awards from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. His next film, the largely autobiographical Léolo, was selected in 1992 for the Palme d'Or at Cannes and that same year won the Golden Spike at the Valladolid Film Festival, almost immediately becoming a real "cult film”. In fact, in 2005, TIME magazine chose it as one of the top 100 films of all time. At the time of his fatal accident, Lauzon was preparing the screenplay for what was going to be his third film.